And next as to the directions I have given for running into the latitude of 61 or 62 south, before any endeavour is made to stand to the westward. The reasons for this precept are, that in all probability the violence of the currents will be hereby avoided, and the weather will prove less tempestuous and uncertain. This last circumstance we ourselves experienced most remarkably, for after we had unexpectedly fallen in with the land, as has been mentioned in the preceding chapter, we stood away to the southward to run clear of it, and were no sooner advanced into sixty degrees or upwards but we met with much better weather and smoother water than in any other part of the whole passage. The air indeed was very cold and sharp, and we had strong gales, but they were steady and uniform, and we had at the same time sunshine and a clear sky; whereas in the lower latitudes the winds every now and then intermitted, as it were, to recover new strength, and then returned suddenly in the most violent gusts, threatening at each blast the loss of our masts, which must have ended in our certain destruction. And that the currents in this high latitude would be of much less efficacy than nearer the land seems to be evinced from these considerations, that all currents run with greater violence near the shore than at sea, and that at great distances from shore they are scarcely perceptible. Indeed the reason of this seems sufficiently obvious, if we consider that constant currents are, in all probability, produced by constant winds, the wind driving before it, though with a slow and imperceptible motion, a large body of water, which being accumulated upon any coast that it meets with, must escape along the shore by the endeavours of its surface to reduce itself to the same level with the rest of the ocean. And it is reasonable to suppose that those violent gusts of wind which we experienced near the shore, so very different from what we found in the latitude of sixty degrees and upwards, may be owing to a similar cause, for a westerly wind almost perpetually prevails in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean. {89} And this current of air being interrupted by those immense hills called the Andes, and by the mountains on Terra del Fuego, which together bar up the whole country to the southward as far as Cape Horn, a part of it only can force its way over the tops of those prodigious precipices, whilst the rest must naturally follow the direction of the coast, and must range down the land to the southward, and sweep with an impetuous and irregular blast round Cape Horn and the southermost part of Terra del Fuego. However, not to rely on these speculations, we may, I believe, establish as incontestible these matters of fact, that both the rapidity of the currents and the violence of the western gales are less sensible in the latitude of 61 or 62 degrees than nearer the shore of Terra del Fuego.